


Unquiet

by walk_in_sunshine



Category: Redwall Series - Brian Jacques
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 12:42:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11874687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walk_in_sunshine/pseuds/walk_in_sunshine
Summary: Week 4: Death. She's looking for an old friend...





	Unquiet

  **Unquiet**

 She often found him in the gardens, playing with the abbeybabes- with his little grandson, or the woodland children who had nobeast to call _grandfather_ \- and the old friends might sit and talk for hours on the green.

 There were days he acted like a creature with no living heirs, and at once too many.

  _The one is enough. The one is enough,_ he'd whisper, thinking then of the many who _were_  once, and _were_  no more. And then he would smile, and the Dibbuns would lead him in another game.

 If another old friend of hers were still around perhaps he'd smile too. And he would shake his head and murmur, _"so like Martin... so like Martin..."_

 But Methuselah's grave was older than the gray on her head, and Constance didn't know Martin. Only Matthias. Her friend- the warrior, the widower- who every day played chase with woodland orphans like visions of his own youth. Constance wondered where he found the energy.

 She left the orchards empty as she found them and cooled her footpaws in the abbey pond. He spent little time in the gatehouse, in these long days.

  _Too lonely,_ he'd murmur, or: _too much-_ too much of what, or like what, he'd always tell her. She'd never quite hear.

 He'd hardly look at the rosebush anymore. Spent his nights in the dormitories and his evenings in Great Hall, watching. Waiting. Looking for what-she-did-not- - for whom-she-did-not- - _oh._

_"He visited me once."_

_His eyes were wide, his body still but unquiet._

_"Before. When I was young."_

_His eyes were trained on the belltower._

_"He said I'd do it. He said I'd ring the big bell. I did it."_

_"I did it." He occupied a strange place between calm and panic. "When will the bell toll for me, Constance?"_

_"For you?" The badger had laughed. "You're like Methuselah. These walls will crumble before you're buried within them."_

_He didn't seem to hear her._

_"_ _Martin wrote a lot. In the end. Poems, songs... the dreams of other creatures. Riddles- like the ones we solved... and he laid down to sleep."_

_He shivered. And the action, and the words before and behind the action were so unlike Matthias._

_"_ _I don't want to write my riddles, Constance. I fear the truth in them."_

_Constance shook her great striped head and nudged her friend in the direction of the orchards, where the abbey creatures gathered for an early summer feast. "Enough talk of death, young friend. Let's go and enjoy life."_

She passed by the laterose, and found it withered. There was a puff of breeze where the air was still, just enough to ruffle her guard hairs- like the passing of a butterfly. There was a bell that whispered where no bell tolled. Constance paused, shivered, and ambled away to find Matthias.

 

_The twin bells tolled in his honor- not in their turn but in a rhythmic unity, that they echoed their predecessor as he echoed his._

 

_The laterose mourned a long fortnight, until one morning the infant Martin was found fast asleep, unharmed, in the heart of the thorns._


End file.
